Why don’t I run faster? – Unlocking the Secret of my Slowness (Part I)

I love running for the almost meditative effects that it has on me. At the same time, I hate that I run so depressingly slow.

In my twenties my times were actually not too bad. Not enough for competitive ambitions but not too shabby either. A mere decade later my running times have deteriorated massively, and just getting below the 1h for 10km again was a massive battle. In past years I often wondered what exactly caused the breakdown of my running abilities. So let's take a look.

Quarterly Lederhosen Report Q2 2016 - Checking in on my New Year's Resolution

This is the quarterly check-in on the goals from my New Year's resolution. Just as a reminder, the idea was to choose targets that fulfill the S.M.A.R.T criteria: being specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-related. By making my goals public and checking-in regularly with you out there, I hoped to keep me motivated over the year to achieve all goals for 2016. And just in case this is not enough, I added a punishment on top, promising to go to work in original Bavarian Lederhosen on the first working day in 2017 if I miss more than one of the six goals for the year. Still pretty scary! So let's see where I am at the half-year mark of 2016.

Want to increase your Happiness? Fight off FOMO!

Some of the biggest obstacles on our path to happiness are inside of our own heads -- deep-rooted instincts that might have once served an evolutionary purpose, but that now are mainly lowering our quality of life.

One of the strongest and most destructive of these innate reflexes is FOMO. What sounds like an uptown art gallery, stands for “Fear of Missing Out” and is far less innocent than it appears.

Deconstructed Me – What I Learned About Myself Through DNA analysis

Quantified Self is, in many ways, the antidote to the trend of “big data”. Big data accumulates, averages and tries to generate recipes for the masses. QS in contrast analyzes the single individual, trying to identify what works for one particular person.

One of the more technical exercises I did in my eternal journey to understand myself was getting my DNA analyzed. In this Life-Sparring round I share my experience and give a first glimpse of the findings.